Knife Edge
Knife Edge lifts the lid on our industrialised system of food production, showing how ruthless supermarket cost cutting has led to some appalling practices in the farming and food processing industries, including fraud, false labelling and the sale of contaminated products that could be a danger to human health.
An exhilarating mix of high-precision plotting, gripping action and thought-provoking social realism, Knife Edge affirms Paul Adam’s reputation as one of the masters of the contemporary thriller.
Investigative reporter Joe Verdi has never given much thought to how supermarkets operate. Then a murder inquiry takes him undercover into the heart of Britain’s agri-business and he discovers the true cost of our cut-price food.
In London, a newly-arrived Kurdish immigrant is brutally murdered by Turkish people-traffickers. The dead man’s wife, Irena, the key witness to the killing, flees to East Anglia where she disappears into the murky world of gangmasters and illegal foreign workers.
Then three people contract typhoid and the only link between them seems to be the supermarket chain where they bought their food.
Joe Verdi, crime correspondent for a national newspaper, goes undercover as a migrant worker to try to find Irena. But he’s not the only one looking for her – the Turks are also on her trail.
Meanwhile, Joe’s colleague, Ellie Mason, is following up the typhoid outbreak. As the two reporters’ investigations come together in a heart-stopping climax, the shocking truth about our industrialised system of food production is uncovered. There is a price to pay for cheap food – and sometimes that price is people’s lives.
Knife Edge is published in the UK by Endeavour Publishing. It is also available in audio edition and as a Kindle e-book.